All you hippies would love for Iraq to turn into Vietnam.

The analogies you cite are not even remotely akin to the current situation our nation faces. I shan't bother to rehash what has long been debunked by historians, but in point of fact if any analogy from WWII can be considered relevant it is that WE have assumed the role previously born by the Nazis with their drive for colonial expansionism and utter disregard for the League of Nations.

Neither in Japan nor Germany did we "create" democracy. Both people's had previously accepted democratic principles and (certainly in the case of Germany) had pre-existing democratic systems in place. You hopefully realise that Hitler himself was democratically elected.

It is the decades since WWII in which we have increasingly displayed presumptuous arrogance, deceit and the predelection for militant conflict resolution (whether directly or by proxy) all stirred on by our military industrial complex which has gorged itself on exhorbitant budgetary increases and the blood of our less priviledge children.

From Korea to Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, et al. Washington's dispicable lies and double standards have left repression, death and economic instability in their wake. No virginia we are NOT the good guys they want you to believe we are on tv.

Yes Kosovo was an abuse of power but one which is shared by all NATO members. The far more salient criticism in that conflict is the manner in which we purposely bombed civilian targets only to have the Pentagon spin machine insist they were legitimate military targets.

As for what I remember, yes i recall very well the entire charade since 9/11 itself and have had the benefit of 14 years of international political experience as an analyst to comprehend clearly the writing on the wall. Orwell couldnt have been more prophetic of the world the PNAC intend if he had tried.

 

Wrong...where exactly did you see democratic "principles" in japan? As for hitler being democratically elected..yeah..burning down the reichstag and blaming it on communists helped. Not to mention he turned into a dictator. Thats not democracy. Hitler destroyed the weimar republic. And Yes, america did help and facilitate the construction of a democracy that has lasted. To deny otherwise is foolish.

Your analogy to us being the nazi's is foolish, naive and very misguided. America does not seek world domination like the european powers of old. Yeah, america the great colonist...i'm glad we have japan and western europe as our colonies now...the phillippines? Yep, we left when they asked us too after ww2...we're such brutal horrible imperialists that the germans are ASKING us to keep our troops in their country...damn us and our colonial ambitions.

Yeah..the economic destruction we have left in our wake.....the most prospreous time in history for mankind. Yes america has done a lot of bad...not because we are horrible evil dictators doing them in the name of raison d'etat, but because they were deemed NECESSARY EVILS.

So kosovo was most justified because nato was behind us? Nato is NO substitute for the UN or "international law" To say it is hypocritical.

 

Obviously you have neither the experience nor obviously the historic knowledge to mount any credible response. You are factually incorrect im afraid and tis you who wallows in misinformation and naivete.

The principle of war of aggression remains consistently evil whether perpetrated by the Third Reich or by modern day Washington. That you refuse to see that simple fact demonstrates clearly you own willfull blindness.

As for Democracy in Germany, your response is repleat with non-sequitors.

First off, Hitler didn't destroy the Weimar Republic, it was bankrupted by the reparations demanded of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and was utterly broken when Hitler was ELECTED. That he subsequently became a dictator only serves to warn us of the potential for any elected government to descend into tyranny, something this Bush administration and its PNAC mentors are working overtime to achieve by systematically dismantling Constitutional protections and installing a secret police state. Hitler may have had his reichstag but Bush had his Florida voting scam, both happened under fully developed democratic systems.

Secondly, I refer you to the discussion of respected historians on the matter of Japan and Germany...

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.18/13-democratization.html

For additional evidence of pre-existing democratic frameworks in Japan note the following...

http://www.bartleby.com/65/it/Itagaki.html

As homogenous societies with prior experience in democratic principles and processes neither Germany nor Japan can be compared to Iraq which is a factious tribally diverse society that has always relied on a "strongman" to keep cohesion. If Iraq is comparable to any western situation, it would be post-Tito Yugoslavia.

As for our "colonies", perhaps you are as unschooled in current economic reality as you are history and international relations. Indirectly the whole planet is tied to the US (currently that is, though that is incrementally changing) economy and is thereby browbeaten with economic retaliation when desired to serve (or in the very least stand aside) our corporate interests.

More directly you are again clearly in the dark as to the extent to which we have established a military presence in nearly every country of the globe. This is as sure a sign of a militant-centered foreign policy of hegemony and intimidation (when our imposed or otherwise backed puppets no longer choose to serve Washington's interests) as one could ask for. I advise you to educate yourself on the concept of "neo-colonialism" and all it entails.

As for the rest of your response, nowhere did i call us "horrible evil dictators". Moreover, contrary to your typical right wing misreading of any critique of US policy, I refer essentially to the evils of our chosen policy path. That is quite a different matter than labelling my fellow countrymen as "evil". Further, I did not suggest for one minute that Kosovo was justified because it was conducted by NATO. I encourage you to reread what i actually wrote rather than what you wanted me to say to suit your argument.

As for your intimation that Washington is somehow excused for its criminal machinations in establishing and backing brutal regimes (only to later justify further brutality of armed conflict to oust them) because it was a "necessary evil", only further underscores your hypocrisy and ideological bent. The only "necessity" at work in our collusion with brutal regimes is to pave the way for increased corporate profit. Obviously the sovereignty of other nations, the wellbeing of their citizens and the "rule of law" are of far less value to you than ensuring our irresponsible and gluttonous consumption of world resources
may continue unhindered regardless of how many are killed, repressed, or simply denied any chance for self-determination free of our imposed controls.

Sadly the right wing in the US has become drunk with misinformation and blind ideological bootstomping. Live outside the US for a while and perhaps youll come to understand what the rest of the world sees all too clearly about the results of our militancy over the past half century.

 

First off, if you want to call Hitler democratically elected when he was a criminal who should have been locked up, thats your perogative. Yes, the majority of the people voted for him. Had they known HE burned down the reichstag, he would have been inelligible to run. Call it democratic if you want, but you are woefully mistaken. As for comparing it to bush an the florida fiasco? Thats a far, far stretch. The Supreme court is a seperate faction of the government and they called the voting unconstitutional. How you want to compare that to a terrorist act, is beyond me..but you seem to stretch to make your points.

HOw you can say the weimar republic didnt cease to exist when hitler came to power is BEYOND ME...did he or did he NOT turn the country into a dictatorship?

Yuo have once again took something i said and make a wrong assumption. I never said that iraq was anything like japan or germany. I said thankfully we did not pickup and leave those two countries.


As for our military presence...almost ALL of them are concenctrated in about 6 countries: Japan, South Korea, Germany, UK, Iraq, Qatar. We have impressive military precense in other countries...like ONE SOLDIER in djibouti. Other than iraq, we are welcomed in every with our troops. We are not there against their requests. SO NO, we are not colonising them.

Yep, you're right. There is a hypocracy. Its a hypocracy which we all know exists, and yet we all deny. The "west" does not always play by the rule of international law that it spews about. We do what is necessary and what we think is right: read kosovo. The only thing that has kept any inclination of an "international rule of law" was the willingness to go to war and *NOT* work through the UN. While we want to work through the rule of law when possible. It is not always feasible or acceptable to wait and try to work thruogh it. Thankfully, some nations stand ready to do just that. I do not call what america did justified. I called it a necessary evil.

Personally, i think you're the one displaying your ignorance on the statements. Not only have you twisted what i say other times, you are propagating lies through your misguided analogies to the nazi's. Since you seem to think you know so much about history, i would think you should know better than to compare the nazi's to the present day americans. But you seem to continue to wallow in ignorance.

Btw, i have lived outside the US(hong kong) for 3 years of my life. I did learn a lot of things. THe world is hypocritical. The world is corrupt. We are no better or worse than any of the other western nations.

 

Since you wish to argue by referring to what you presume i posted rather than what was actually said, I have little inclination to continue this exercise in futility.

Enjoy your willful ignorance and refusal to learn the truth of what is going on.

 

ironically fitting.

 

Fitting indeed as i'm sure most here would agree. Ironic it is not.

You have much yet to learn and you wont do that by relying on US sanitised media for information.

[n.b. For a comprehensive picture of US military preseence around the world see here...]

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2003/0710imperialmap.htm

 

certainly being the wise historian and sage of all american knowledge...you know that we send troops to other countries for training operations....at the request of their governments...you have yet to prove that we are anywhere we are not watend(with the exception of iraq)...

 

Keep up the littany of ridiculous claims, since you are incapable of supporting any of your contentions with credible evidence as opposed to that by which i have clearly shown your position to be both misinformed and utterly spurious.

Nowhere did i call myself the font of all knowledge. Knowledge of our foreign policy and our long running governing agenda of neo-colonialism, however, I DO have (and with the professional experience to base it upon). I doubt highly that your 3 brief years in Hong Kong (likely at a time of your life when you were anything but concerned about politics) has given you the basis for calling anyone (let alone a foreign affairs professional) naive. I advise you to do some demonstrable research rather than continuing to regurgitate the rhetoric and culturally relativist claims we have all heard repeatedly spewed by the criminal cabal in the White House.

Sending soldiers for joint training missions is not remotely akin to what has been under discussion here. Thos soldiers do remain permanently stationed once the training is finished, not so with permanent military bases in foreign lands.

Rather than responding with another of your knee jerk revisions of what i have just posted, perhaps you could demonstrate some intellectual honesty and spend some time reading through the articles contained in the Global Policy Forum link I provided you. I highly doubt you will bother, but if you care to argue intelligently with proper debating methodology you would do well to address facts with facts.

 

i believe this is the third post in a row you have failed to address my question. Where are we stationed that we are not wanted with the exception of iraq? can you not even answer that simple question?

 

America Helped Saddam come to power.

America has broken more U.N. resolutions than Iraq.

America will continue to suffer at the hands of terrorists until it realises that it has no RIGHT to interfere in the Middle east..or Iraq for that matter..these people are a tribal culture and always have been..leave them alone!...Throw all your Moral crap out the window and Solve the Problem's in your own Police state of a country before Waging self righteous war's on other country's with Hidden agenda's.

 

I think al qaeda has turned their eyes on europe...especially after spain

btw, if you do have a definitive list of UN resolutions america has broken, i am curious.

 

I fall on the likerish side of the debate. I am a history student at university. Now you guys might well have a better historical background than me. You might be better than me at interpreting events than me. What I feel from studying world history is that war is wrong whatever the circumstances.
People talk of "Hitler" and the Nazis and how bad they were and how war is sometimes unavoidable... But they fail to remember that Hitler was a product of an ignorent world. Imperialism was an accepted norm. Brutality a fact of life. Hitler's germany was born of war. It wasn't germany that produced him it was the world.
No-one would in their right mind want the world to decend back into how it was during the first half of the 20th century... so how can we avoid that predicament? I believe by uniting against war and campaining for a better world.
Some people are so patriotic that they believe their country to be always right. How can any human be right when the nature of truth is so ambiguous. You have to ask yourself what you as a person value.
I value my life, my friends, my family and I love the world. On this basis I reject anything that breaks these binds for other people. It doesn't matter who is dropping the bomb, the point is it is still being dropped. Until the bombs stop falling humanity will live in a dark world.
Americans are great people... to say otherwise would be unjust ignorence. I have not met anyone who I would consider evil though. If you are doing something you believe is right that makes you good doesn't it. If you work on the assumption that everyone in the world wants to be good deep down then you have to ask how do I bring the best out in them? Force is never a good way in my opinion.

 

being anti war is nice when its possible.. However its not realistic. We werent going to fix kosovo by being anti war...sanctions were tried, they did nothing...sometimes war is NEEDED....i dont see why people fail to acknowledge that. War can be a necessary evil.

With the example you stead yourself about hitler. Could non violence have beaten fascism? France and England tried that and it helped cause the bloodiest war in human history.

 

The sees of fascism were sown in European imperial policy in the 19th century. The seeds of Islamic militancy are not just being sown by the qu'ran but by the situation in the world in general. Until established doctrines of what is right or wrong are addressed there will be war.Maybe I am wrong. Maybe war is nessessary. For me though the only time when war is needed is when people don't realise its wrong.

 

i think the seeds of fascism were just another attempt to find out what system works best. With fascism defeated and communism(lennist communism defeated).....there really isnt any viable alternative than democracy....once people realize that...and once people realize that we can all have a better life by working together and competing through economics instead of guns...then war can cease to exist..but that isnt going to happen in our life time.

 

What is with all the argueing? You speak of peace, but come in anger?
Ye hypocrites, both of you!

 

Ah yes, to all you Bush haters out there let me throw something else in the mix. Libs everywhere have called for the resignation of memebers of the Bush administration, saying that they are just as responsible as the soldiers directly involved in the "torturing". You may be correct, maybe Bush should step down and let the almighty John Kerry step into office. That is, if he is not too busy throwing away his medals or ribbons, or not, but medal and ribbon mean the same thing, I don't own an SUV, I am proud to own a Suburban that gets 10 m.p.g., I think Bush should apologize for Kerry burning down fucking hooches in Vietnam.
Any sane person would not think that war is good, instead of waiting for war to happen and then protesting, why don't you try to do something about it. Answer some of my questions first posted in this thread. Don't you think America needs to be involved????????????? If we don't, who the fuck will?????? France, Germany, and Russia????? Or are they too busy stuffing their pockets with Husseins bloody oil money. I wish the U.S. wasn't in a bind and needed the U.N.'s help, otherwise we would be calling them out and the rest of the world would see why they were so against the war.
I don't want to hear about why we shouldn't have gone to war anymore. How about for a change, suggest what else we could have done to prevent war with Hussein!!!!! What was the speech that Bush made 48 hours or so before the first military operations on Iraq??????

P.S. Enough with the fucking quotes, you're gonna crash the internet.

 

This has gone a bit too far I think. I think that maybe none of us are really able to judge the right or the wrong in the world... Maybe we should just have faith in the course of time's wisdom...

 

I think that is the smartest thing that has been said on this thread so far. Except, that won't help pass my time.